81-480: Maya Deren ( / ˈ d ɛr ən / ; born Eleonora Derenkovskaya , Ukrainian: Елеоно́ра Деренко́вська ; May 12 [ O.S. April 29] 1917 – October 13, 1961) was a Ukrainian-born (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, now Ukraine) American experimental filmmaker and important part of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer. The function of film, Deren believed,
162-616: A Bachelor's degree in literature in June 1936, and returned to Syracuse that fall. She and Bardacke became active in various socialist causes in New York City; and it was during this time that they separated and eventually divorced three years later. In 1938, Deren attended the New School for Social Research , and received a master's degree in English literature at Smith College . Her Master's thesis
243-512: A Russian." Deren defined cinema as an art, provided an intellectual context for film viewing, and filled a theoretical gap for the kinds of independent films that film societies were featuring. As Sarah Keller states, “Maya Deren lays claim to the honor of being one of the most important pioneers of the American film avant-garde with a scant seventy-five or so minutes of finished films to her credit.” Deren began to screen and distribute her films in
324-421: A children's book on dance and applying for a managerial job for her and her dance troupe; she later became Dunham's assistant and publicist. Deren travelled with the troupe for a year, learning greater appreciation for dance, as well as interest and appreciation for Haitian culture. Dunham's fieldwork influenced Deren's studies of Haitian culture and Vodou mythology . At the end of touring a new musical Cabin in
405-428: A commercial novel, and also translated a work by Victor Serge which was never published. She became known for her European-style handmade clothes, wild red curly hair and fierce convictions. In 1940, Deren moved to Los Angeles to focus on her poetry and freelance photography. In 1941, Deren wrote to Katherine Dunham —an African American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist of Caribbean culture and dance—suggesting
486-567: A doctor and member of the arts scene, notorious for his liberal prescription of drugs, who later became famous as one of President John F. Kennedy 's physicians. Deren was an inspiration to such up-and-coming avant-garde filmmakers as Curtis Harrington , Stan Brakhage , and Kenneth Anger , who emulated her independent, entrepreneurial spirit. Her influence can also be seen in films by Carolee Schneemann , Barbara Hammer , and Su Friedrich . In his review for renowned experimental filmmaker David Lynch 's Inland Empire , writer Jim Emerson compares
567-506: A letter dated "12/22 Dec. 1635". In his biography of John Dee , The Queen's Conjurer , Benjamin Woolley surmises that because Dee fought unsuccessfully for England to embrace the 1583/84 date set for the change, "England remained outside the Gregorian system for a further 170 years, communications during that period customarily carrying two dates". In contrast, Thomas Jefferson , who lived while
648-468: A major obstacle to the definition and development of motion pictures as a creative fine-art form." She set herself in opposition to the Hollywood film industry's standards and practices. Deren talks about the freedoms of independent cinema: Artistic freedom means that the amateur filmmaker is never forced to sacrifice visual drama and beauty to a stream of words...to the relentless activity and explanations of
729-455: A measure of its larger meaning. Deren filmed 18,000 feet of Vodou rituals and people she met in Haiti on her Bolex camera. The footage was incorporated into a posthumous documentary film Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti , edited and produced in 1977 (with funding from Deren's friend James Merrill ) by her ex-husband, Teiji Itō (1935–1982), and his wife Cherel Winett Itō (1947–1999). All of
810-477: A plot...nor is the amateur production expected to return profit on a huge investment by holding the attention of a massive and motley audience for 90 minutes...Instead of trying to invent a plot that moves, use the movement of wind, or water, children, people, elevators, balls, etc. as a poem might celebrate these. And use your freedom to experiment with visual ideas; your mistakes will not get you fired. When Maya Deren decided to make an ethnographic film in Haiti, she
891-878: A start-of-year adjustment works well with little confusion for events before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. For example, the Battle of Agincourt is well known to have been fought on 25 October 1415, which is Saint Crispin's Day . However, for the period between the first introduction of the Gregorian calendar on 15 October 1582 and its introduction in Britain on 14 September 1752, there can be considerable confusion between events in Continental Western Europe and in British domains. Events in Continental Western Europe are usually reported in English-language histories by using
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#1732851526874972-405: A universalizing, totalizing effect- as it is easier to relate to an unknown, faceless woman. Multiple selves appear, shifting between the first and third person, suggesting that the super-ego is at play, which is in line with the psychoanalytic Freudian staircase and flower motifs. This kind of Freudian interpretation, which she disagreed with, led Deren to add sound, composed by Teiji Itō , to
1053-526: Is 9 February 1649, the date by which his contemporaries in some parts of continental Europe would have recorded his execution. The O.S./N.S. designation is particularly relevant for dates which fall between the start of the "historical year" (1 January) and the legal start date, where different. This was 25 March in England, Wales, Ireland and the colonies until 1752, and until 1600 in Scotland. In Britain, 1 January
1134-422: Is a fragment depicting a carefully constructed exploration of a man who dances in a forest, and then seems to teleport to the inside of a house because of how continuous his movements are from one place to the next. The edit is broken, choppy, showing different angles and compositions, and even with parts in slow-motion, Deren is able to keep the quality of the leap smooth and seemingly uninterrupted. The choreography
1215-555: Is concerned with the interior experiences of an individual. It does not record an event which could be witnessed by other persons. Rather, it reproduces the way in which the subconscious of an individual will develop, interpret, and elaborate an apparently simple and casual incident into a critical emotional experience. Deren filmed At Land in Port Jefferson and Amagansett, New York in the summer of 1944. Taking on more of an environmental psychologist's perspective, Deren "externalizes
1296-466: Is famous for how it resonated with Deren's own life and anxieties. According to a review in The Moving Image , "this film emerges from a set of concerns and passionate commitments that are native to Deren's life and her trajectory. The first of these trajectories is Deren's interest in socialism during her youth and university years". There is no concrete information about the conception of Meshes of
1377-423: Is perfectly synched as he seamlessly appears in an outdoor courtyard and then returns to an open, natural space. It shows a progression from nature to the confines of society, and back to nature. The figure belongs to dancer and choreographer Talley Beatty , whose last movement is a leap across the screen back to the natural world. Deren and Beatty met through Katherine Dunham, while Deren was her assistant and Beatty
1458-447: The League of Nations International School of Geneva , Switzerland for high school from 1930 to 1933. Her mother moved to Paris, France to be nearer to her while she studied. Deren learned to speak French while she was abroad. Deren enrolled at Syracuse University at sixteen, where she began studying journalism and political science. Deren became a highly active socialist activist during
1539-542: The Metropolitan Opera Ballet School and Antony Tudor to create The Very Eye of Night . Deren's background and interest in dance appears in her work, most notably in the short film A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945). This combination of dance and film has often been referred to as "choreocinema", a term first coined by American dance critic John Martin . In her work, she often focused on
1620-1118: The Nazi Party . The University in Exile was initially founded by the director of the New School, Alvin Saunders Johnson , through the financial contributions of Hiram Halle and the Rockefeller Foundation . The University in Exile and its subsequent incarnations have been the intellectual heart of the New School. Notable scholars associated with the University in Exile include psychologists Erich Fromm and Max Wertheimer , political philosophers Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss , social psychologist Everett Dean Martin , philosophers Aron Gurwitsch , Hans Jonas , and Reiner Schürmann , sociologists Alfred Schutz , Peter L. Berger , and Arthur Vidich , economists Adolph Lowe and Robert Heilbroner , and historians Charles Tilly and Louise Tilly . Following
1701-592: The Russian Empire and the very beginning of Soviet Russia . For example, in the article "The October (November) Revolution", the Encyclopædia Britannica uses the format of "25 October (7 November, New Style)" to describe the date of the start of the revolution. The Latin equivalents, which are used in many languages, are, on the one hand, stili veteris (genitive) or stilo vetere (ablative), abbreviated st.v. , and meaning "(of/in) old style" ; and, on
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#17328515268741782-692: The Trotskyist movement in her late teens. She served as National Student Secretary in the National Student office of the Young People's Socialist League and was a member of the Social Problems Club at Syracuse University. At age eighteen in June 1935, she married Gregory Bardacke, a socialist activist whom she met through the Social Problems Club. After his graduation in 1935, she moved to New York City. She finished school at New York University with
1863-627: The 19th century, a practice that the author Karen Bellenir considered to reveal a deep emotional resistance to calendar reform. New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research ( NSSR ), previously known as The University in Exile and The New School University , is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City , United States . NSSR explores and promotes what they describe as global peace and global justice . It enrolls more than 1,000 students from all regions of
1944-532: The 4th century , had drifted from reality . The Gregorian calendar reform also dealt with the accumulated difference between these figures, between the years 325 and 1582, by skipping 10 days to set the ecclesiastical date of the equinox to be 21 March, the median date of its occurrence at the time of the First Council of Nicea in 325. Countries that adopted the Gregorian calendar after 1699 needed to skip an additional day for each subsequent new century that
2025-611: The Afternoon (1943), her collaboration with her husband at the time, Alexander Hammid , has been one of the most influential experimental films in American cinema history. Deren went on to make several more films, including but not limited to At Land (1944), A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), writing, producing, directing, editing, and photographing them with help from only one other person, Hella Heyman , her camerawoman. Deren
2106-590: The Afternoon (1943), made in collaboration with Hammid in their Los Angeles home on a budget of $ 250. Meshes of the Afternoon is recognized as a seminal American avant-garde film. Critics have seen autobiographical elements in the film, as well as thoughts about woman as subject rather than as object. Originally a silent film with no dialogue, music for the film was composed, long after its initial screenings, by Deren's third husband Teiji Itō in 1952. The film can be described as an expressionistic "trance film", full of dramatic angles and innovative editing. It investigates
2187-418: The Afternoon beyond that Deren offered the poetic ideas and Hammid was able to turn them into visuals, as she envisioned them. Deren's initial concept began on the terms of a subjective camera, one that would show the point of view of herself without the aid of mirrors and would move as her eyes through spaces. According to the earliest program note, she describes Meshes of the Afternoon as follows: This film
2268-579: The Boyne was commemorated with smaller parades on 1 July. However, both events were combined in the late 18th century, and continue to be celebrated as " The Twelfth ". Because of the differences, British writers and their correspondents often employed two dates, a practice called dual dating , more or less automatically. Letters concerning diplomacy and international trade thus sometimes bore both Julian and Gregorian dates to prevent confusion. For example, Sir William Boswell wrote to Sir John Coke from The Hague
2349-504: The British Isles and colonies converted to the Gregorian calendar, instructed that his tombstone bear his date of birth by using the Julian calendar (notated O.S. for Old Style) and his date of death by using the Gregorian calendar. At Jefferson's birth, the difference was eleven days between the Julian and Gregorian calendars and so his birthday of 2 April in the Julian calendar is 13 April in
2430-410: The British colonies, changed the start of the year from 25 March to 1 January, with effect from "the day after 31 December 1751". (Scotland had already made this aspect of the changes, on 1 January 1600.) The second (in effect ) adopted the Gregorian calendar in place of the Julian calendar. Thus "New Style" can refer to the start-of-year adjustment , to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar , or to
2511-612: The Gregorian calendar. For example, the Battle of Blenheim is always given as 13 August 1704. However, confusion occurs when an event involves both. For example, William III of England arrived at Brixham in England on 5 November (Julian calendar), after he had set sail from the Netherlands on 11 November (Gregorian calendar) 1688. The Battle of the Boyne in Ireland took place a few months later on 1 July 1690 (Julian calendar). That maps to 11 July (Gregorian calendar), conveniently close to
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2592-466: The Gregorian calendar. Similarly, George Washington is now officially reported as having been born on 22 February 1732, rather than on 11 February 1731/32 (Julian calendar). The philosopher Jeremy Bentham , born on 4 February 1747/8 (Julian calendar), in later life celebrated his birthday on 15 February. There is some evidence that the calendar change was not easily accepted. Many British people continued to celebrate their holidays "Old Style" well into
2673-430: The Julian and Gregorian dating systems respectively. The need to correct the calendar arose from the realisation that the correct figure for the number of days in a year is not 365.25 (365 days 6 hours) as assumed by the Julian calendar but slightly less (c. 365.242 days). The Julian calendar therefore has too many leap years . The consequence was that the basis for the calculation of the date of Easter , as decided in
2754-564: The Julian calendar had added since then. When the British Empire did so in 1752, the gap had grown to eleven days; when Russia did so (as its civil calendar ) in 1918, thirteen days needed to be skipped. In the Kingdom of Great Britain and its possessions, the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 introduced two concurrent changes to the calendar. The first, which applied to England, Wales, Ireland and
2835-510: The Julian date of the subsequent (and more decisive) Battle of Aughrim on 12 July 1691 (Julian). The latter battle was commemorated annually throughout the 18th century on 12 July, following the usual historical convention of commemorating events of that period within Great Britain and Ireland by mapping the Julian date directly onto the modern Gregorian calendar date (as happens, for example, with Guy Fawkes Night on 5 November). The Battle of
2916-559: The New York Times as well as Dance Magazine. By her fourth film, Deren discussed in An Anagram that she felt special attention should be given to unique possibilities of time and that the form should be ritualistic as a whole. Ritual in Transfigured Time began in August and was completed in 1946. It explored the fear of rejection and the freedom of expression in abandoning ritual, looking at
2997-1005: The Sky , the Dunham dance company stopped in Los Angeles for several months to work in Hollywood . It was there that Deren met Alexandr Hackenschmied (who later changed his name to Alexander Hammid), a celebrated Czech-born photographer and cameraman who would become Deren's second husband in 1942. Hackenschmied had fled from Czechoslovakia in 1938 after the Sudetenland crisis . Deren and Hammid lived together in Laurel Canyon , where he helped her with her still photography which focused on local fruit pickers in Los Angeles. Of two still photography magazine assignments of 1943 to depict artists active in New York City, including Ossip Zadkine , her photographs appeared in
3078-634: The United States and from more than 70 countries. The New School for Social Research was founded in 1919 by, among others, Charles Beard , John Dewey , James Harvey Robinson , and Thorstein Veblen . In 1933, what became known as the University in Exile , had become a haven for scholars who had been dismissed from teaching positions by the Italian fascists under Benito Mussolini or had to flee Adolf Hitler and
3159-596: The United States, Canada , and Cuba , lecturing and writing on avant-garde film theory, and additionally on Vodou. In February 1946 she booked the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village for a major public exhibition, titled Three Abandoned Films , in which she showed Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), At Land (1944) and A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945). The event was completely sold out, inspiring Amos Vogel 's formation of Cinema 16 ,
3240-567: The Vogue magazine article. The other article intended for Mademoiselle magazine was not published, but three signed enlargements of photographs intended for this article, all depicting Deren's friend New York ceramist Carol Janeway , are preserved in the MoMA and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. All prints were from Janeway's estate. In 1943, she moved to a bungalow on Kings Road in Hollywood and adopted
3321-620: The ceremonies. She documented her knowledge and experience of Vodou in Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (New York: Vanguard Press, 1953), edited by Joseph Campbell , which is considered a definitive source on the subject. She described her attraction to Vodou possession ceremonies, transformation, dance, play, games and especially ritual came from her strong feeling on the need to decenter our thoughts of self, ego and personality. In her book An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form, and Film she wrote: The ritualistic form treats
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3402-568: The collapse of totalitarian regimes in Europe, the University in Exile was renamed the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. In 1964, John R. Everett became the President of the New School for Social Research, which position he held until he retired in 1982. Harry Gideonse was Chancellor of the New School for Social Research from 1966 until 1975, when he retired. In 1997, the school
3483-486: The combination of the two. It was through their use in the Calendar Act that the notations "Old Style" and "New Style" came into common usage. When recording British history, it is usual to quote the date as originally recorded at the time of the event, but with the year number adjusted to start on 1 January. The latter adjustment may be needed because the start of the civil calendar year had not always been 1 January and
3564-491: The details as well as the bigger ideas of the nature and process of change. The main roles were played by Deren herself and the dancers Rita Christiani and Frank Westbrook. Deren's Meditation on Violence was made in 1948. Chao-Li Chi 's performance obscures the distinction between violence and beauty. It was an attempt to "abstract the principle of ongoing metamorphosis", found in Ritual in Transfigured Time, though Deren felt it
3645-467: The domestic space is explored, the feminist dictum "the personal is political" is foregrounded. As with her other films on self-representation, Deren navigates conflicting tendencies of the self and the "other", through doubling, multiplication and merging of the woman in the film. Following a dreamlike quest with allegorical complexity, Meshes of the Afternoon has an enigmatic structure and a loose affinity with both film noir and domestic melodrama. The film
3726-533: The end of the following December, 1661/62 , a form of dual dating to indicate that in the following twelve weeks or so, the year was 1661 Old Style but 1662 New Style. Some more modern sources, often more academic ones (e.g. the History of Parliament ) also use the 1661/62 style for the period between 1 January and 24 March for years before the introduction of the New Style calendar in England. The Gregorian calendar
3807-407: The ephemeral ways in which the protagonist's unconscious mind works and makes connections between objects and situations. A woman, played by Maya Deren, walks up to a house in Los Angeles, falls asleep and seems to have a dream. The sequence of walking up to the gate on the partially shaded road restarts numerous times, resisting conventional narrative expectations, and ends in various situations inside
3888-685: The family name from Derenkovskaya to "Deren" shortly after they arrived in New York. He became the staff psychiatrist at the State Institute for the Feeble-Minded in Syracuse. Deren's mother was a musician and dancer who had studied these arts in Kyiv. In 1928, Deren's parents became naturalized citizens of the United States. Deren was highly intelligent, starting fifth grade at only eight years old. She attended
3969-407: The film. Another interpretation is that each film is an example of a "personal film". Her first film, Meshes of the Afternoon , explores a woman's subjectivity and relation to the external world. Georges Sadoul said Deren may have been "the most important figure in the post-war development of the personal, independent film in the U.S.A." In featuring the filmmaker as the woman whose subjectivity in
4050-455: The film. In the December 1946 issue of Esquire magazine, a caption for her photograph teased that she "experiments with motion pictures of the subconscious, but here is finite evidence that the lady herself is infinitely photogenic." Her third husband, Teiji Itō , said: "Maya was always a Russian. In Haiti she was a Russian. She was always dressed up, talking, speaking many languages and being
4131-427: The hidden dynamic of the external world...as if I had moved from a concern with the life of the fish, to a concern with the sea which accounts for the character of the fish and its life." Maya Deren washes up on the shore of the beach, and climbs up a piece of driftwood that leads to a room lit by chandeliers, and one long table filled with men and women smoking. She seems to be invisible to the people as she crawls across
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#17328515268744212-407: The house. Movement from the wind, shadows and the music sustain the heartbeat of the dream. Recurring symbols include a cloaked figure, mirrors, a key, and a knife. The loose repetition and rhythm cut short any expectation of a conventional narrative, heightening the dream-like qualities. The camera initially does not show her face, which precludes identification with a particular woman, which creates
4293-439: The human being not as the source of the dramatic action, but as a somewhat depersonalized element in a dramatic whole. The intent of such depersonalization is not the destruction of the individual; on the contrary, it enlarges him beyond the personal dimension and frees him from the specializations and confines of personality. He becomes part of a dynamic whole which, like all such creative relationships, in turn, endow its parts with
4374-410: The importance of Divine Horsemen , and in contemporary studies it is often cited as an authoritative voice, where Deren's methodology has been especially praised because "Vodou has resisted all orthodoxies, never mistaking surface representations for inner realities." In her book of the same name Deren uses the spelling Voudoun , explaining: "Voudoun terminology, titles and ceremonies still make use of
4455-663: The most successful film society of the 1950s. In 1946, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for "Creative Work in the Field of Motion Pictures", and in 1947, won the Grand Prix International for avant-garde film at the Cannes Film Festival for Meshes of the Afternoon . She then created a scholarship for experimental filmmakers, the Creative Film Foundation. Between 1952 and 1955, Deren collaborated with
4536-582: The movement of the dancer transcends and manipulates the ideas of both time and space. "For Deren, no transition is needed between a place outside (such as a forest, or a park, or the beach) and an interior room. One action can be performed across different physical spaces, as in A Study in Choreography For Camera (1945), and in this way sews together layers of reality, thereby suggesting continuity between different levels of consciousness." At just under 3 minutes long, A Study in Choreography for Camera
4617-579: The name Maya, a pet name her second husband Hammid coined. Maya is the name of the mother of the historical Buddha as well as the dharmic concept of the illusory nature of reality. In Greek myth, Maia is the mother of Hermes and a goddess of mountains and fields. In 1944, back in New York City, her social circle included Marcel Duchamp , André Breton , John Cage , and Anaïs Nin . In 1944, Deren filmed The Witch's Cradle in Peggy Guggenheim 's Art of This Century gallery with Duchamp featured in
4698-617: The original African words and in this book they have been spelled out according to usual English phonetics and so as to render, as closely as possible, the Haitian pronunciation. Most of the songs, sayings and even some of the religious terms, however, are in Creole , which is primarily French in derivation (although it also contains African, Spanish and Indian words). Where the Creole word retains its French meaning, it has been written out so as to indicate both
4779-577: The original French word and the distinctive Creole pronunciation." In her Glossary of Creole Words, Deren includes 'Voudoun' while the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary draws attention to the similar French word, Vaudoux. Deren died in 1961, at the age of 44 from a brain hemorrhage , which has been attributed to a combination of malnutrition and drug use. Her condition may have also been weakened by her long-term dependence on amphetamines and sleeping pills prescribed by Max Jacobson ,
4860-632: The original wire recordings, photographs and notes are held in the Maya Deren Collection at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University . The film footage is housed at Anthology Film Archives in New York City. An LP of some of Deren's wire recordings was published by the newly formed Elektra Records in 1953 entitled Voices of Haiti . The cover art for the album was by Teiji Itō. Anthropologists Melville Herkovitz and Harold Courlander acknowledged
4941-452: The other, stili novi or stilo novo , abbreviated st.n. and meaning "(of/in) new style". The Latin abbreviations may be capitalised differently by different users, e.g., St.n. or St.N. for stili novi . There are equivalents for these terms in other languages as well, such as the German a.St. (" alter Stil " for O.S.). Usually, the mapping of New Style dates onto Old Style dates with
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#17328515268745022-408: The principle of the power of movement." The compositions and varying speeds of movement within the frame inform and interact with Deren's meticulous edits and varying film speeds and motions to create a dance that Deren said could only exist on film. Excited by the way the dynamic of movement is greater than anything else within the film, Maya established a completely new sense of the word "geography" as
5103-732: The rituals of Haitian Vodou . A source of inspiration for ritual dance was Katherine Dunham who wrote her master's thesis on Haitian dances in 1939, which Deren edited. While working as Dunham's assistant, Deren was given access to Dunham's archive which included 16mm documents on the dances in Trinidad and Haiti. Exposure to these documents led her to write her 1942 essay titled, "Religious Possession in Dancing." Afterwards, Deren wrote several articles on religious possession in dancing before her first trip to Haiti. Deren filmed, recorded and photographed many hours of Vodou ritual , but she also participated in
5184-416: The seemingly foreign environments. This is one of Deren's films in which the focus is on the character's exploration of her own subjectivity in her physical environment, inside as well as outside her subconscious, although it has a similar amorphous quality compared to her other films. In the spring of 1945 she made A Study in Choreography for Camera , which Deren said was "an effort to isolate and celebrate
5265-444: The shore. Her expression seems confused when she sees two women playing chess in the sand. She runs back through the entire sequence, and because of the jump-cuts, it seems as though she is a double or "doppelganger", where her earlier self sees her other self running through the scene. Some of her movements are controlled, suggesting a theatrical, dancer-like quality, while some have an almost animalistic sensibility as she crawls through
5346-634: The start of a new year from 25 March ( Lady Day , the Feast of the Annunciation ) to 1 January, a change which Scotland had made in 1600. The second discarded the Julian calendar in favour of the Gregorian calendar, skipping 11 days in the month of September to do so. To accommodate the two calendar changes, writers used dual dating to identify a given day by giving its date according to both styles of dating. For countries such as Russia where no start-of-year adjustment took place, O.S. and N.S. simply indicate
5427-414: The table, uninhibited; her body continues seamlessly again onto a new frame, crawling through foliage; following the flowing pattern of water on rocks; following a man across a farm, to a sick man in bed, through a series of doors, and finally popping up outside on a cliff. She shrinks in the wide frame as she walks farther away from the camera, up and down sand dunes, then frantically collecting rocks back on
5508-423: The time, even influential writers Claire Johnston and Laura Mulvey ignored Deren at the time, though Mulvey later would give Deren this recognition, since their works were often in conversation with each other. In 1943, Deren purchased a used 16mm Bolex camera with some of the inheritance money after her father's death from a heart attack. This camera was used to make her first and best-known film, Meshes of
5589-462: The unconscious experience, such as in Meshes of the Afternoon. This is thought to be inspired by her father who was a student of psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev who explored trance and hypnosis as neurological states. She also regularly explored themes of gender identity, incorporating elements of introspection and mythology. Despite her feminist subtext, she was mostly unrecognized by feminist writers at
5670-728: The work to Meshes of the Afternoon , apparently a favorite of Lynch's. Deren was a key figure in the creation of a New American Cinema, highlighting personal, experimental, underground film. In 1986, the American Film Institute created the Maya Deren Award to honor independent filmmakers. The Legend of Maya Deren, Vol. 1 Part 2 consists of hundreds of documents, interviews, oral histories, letters, and autobiographical memoirs. Works about Deren and her works have been produced in various media: Deren's films have also been shown with newly written alternative soundtracks: Deren
5751-451: Was a dancer in her company. It is worth noting that Beatty collaborated heavily with Deren in the creation of this film, hence why he is credited alongside Deren in the film's credit sequence. The film is also subtitled 'Pas de Deux', a dance term referring to a dance between two people, or in this case, a collaboration between Deren and Beatty. A Study in Choreography for Camera was one of the first experimental dance films to be featured in
5832-590: Was also an important film theorist. Old Style and New Style dates Old Style ( O.S. ) and New Style ( N.S. ) indicate dating systems before and after a calendar change, respectively. Usually, they refer to the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar as enacted in various European countries between 1582 and 1923. In England , Wales , Ireland and Britain's American colonies , there were two calendar changes, both in 1752. The first adjusted
5913-474: Was altered at different times in different countries. From 1155 to 1752, the civil or legal year in England began on 25 March ( Lady Day ); so for example, the execution of Charles I was recorded at the time in Parliament as happening on 30 January 164 8 (Old Style). In newer English-language texts, this date is usually shown as "30 January 164 9 " (New Style). The corresponding date in the Gregorian calendar
5994-629: Was born May 12 [ O.S. April 29] 1917 in Kyiv (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, now Ukraine), into a Jewish family, to psychologist Solomon Derenkowsky and Gitel-Malka (Marie) Fiedler, who supposedly named their daughter after Italian actress Eleonora Duse . In 1922, the family fled the Ukrainian SSR because of antisemitic pogroms perpetrated by the White Volunteer Army and moved to Syracuse, New York . Her father shortened
6075-587: Was celebrated as the New Year festival from as early as the 13th century, despite the recorded (civil) year not incrementing until 25 March, but the "year starting 25th March was called the Civil or Legal Year, although the phrase Old Style was more commonly used". To reduce misunderstandings about the date, it was normal even in semi-official documents such as parish registers to place a statutory new-year heading after 24 March (for example "1661") and another heading from
6156-631: Was criticized for abandoning avant-garde film where she had made her name, but she was ready to expand to a new level as an artist. She had studied ethnographic footage by Gregory Bateson in Bali in 1947, and was interested in including it in her next film. In September, she divorced Hammid and left for a nine-month stay in Haiti. The Guggenheim Fellowship grant in 1946 enabled Deren to finance her travel and film footage for what would posthumously become Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti . She went on three additional trips through 1954 to document and record
6237-545: Was implemented in Russia on 14 February 1918 by dropping the Julian dates of 1–13 February 1918 , pursuant to a Sovnarkom decree signed 24 January 1918 (Julian) by Vladimir Lenin . The decree required that the Julian date was to be written in parentheses after the Gregorian date, until 1 July 1918. It is common in English-language publications to use the familiar Old Style or New Style terms to discuss events and personalities in other countries, especially with reference to
6318-465: Was not as successful in the clarity of that idea, brought down by its philosophical weight. Halfway through the film, the sequence is rewound, producing a film loop. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Deren attacked Hollywood for its artistic, political and economic monopoly over American cinema. She stated, "I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick," criticizing the amount of money spent on production. She also observed that Hollywood "has been
6399-594: Was renamed New School University. It was renamed the "New School for Social Research" in 2005, returning to the original name of the university. Its various colleges were regrouped under various names such as College of Performing Arts (taking on the existing music, jazz, and drama schools), Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts , Parsons School of Design and The New School for Public Engagement (taking on Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy, plus media studies, language studies and other programs). The university also continued with
6480-826: Was titled The Influence of the French Symbolist School on Anglo-American Poetry (1939). This included works of Pound, Eliot, and the Imagists. By the age of 21, Deren had earned two degrees in literature. After graduation from Smith, Deren returned to New York's Greenwich Village , where she joined the European émigré art scene. She supported herself from 1937 to 1939 by freelance writing for radio shows and foreign-language newspapers. During that time she also worked as an editorial assistant to famous American writers Eda Lou Walton , Max Eastman , and then William Seabrook . She wrote poetry and short fiction, tried her hand at writing
6561-609: Was to create an experience. She combined her expertise in dance and choreography, ethnography, the African spirit religion of Haitian Vodou , symbolist poetry and gestalt psychology (as a student of Kurt Koffka ) in a series of perceptual, black-and-white short films. Using editing, multiple exposures , jump-cutting , superimposition , slow-motion, and other camera techniques to her advantage, Deren abandoned established notions of physical space and time, innovating through carefully planned films with specific conceptual aims. Meshes of
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